Corbin explained every reason he didn’t want to ride Pirates. Avery brought a stuffed snail to school on the wrong day. At a theme park, nearly every ride was too tall, so we ended up in a hotel ball pit instead.
There were castles and temples and museums, but there were also vending machines, puddles, elevators, snacks, arguments, naps, and whatever object had become important that morning.
I remember some of the places we went. I remember even more of what the kids did there.
Dani’s eyes flicked across the board.
A single train to Mainz was listed for the rest of the day.
It left in four minutes.
“Track two.”
The shock lasted about a second.
Then we ran.
Bags bounced against our sides. The kids’ backpacks shifted on our shoulders.…
A family friend once told me about a church in Mainz with blue stained-glass windows so strange they frightened her son.
I’d been looking for them ever since we’d landed.
~
Mainz cathedral looked like several buildings pressed into one. Romanesque walls rose beside Gothic ribs and later Baroque additions.…
The hotel sat a mile away, but the distance felt longer.
Our duffel, overstuffed with both backpacks and extra gear, balanced precariously on the stroller frame. The weight bowed the frame. The wheels squeaked. We stopped at nearly every curb to readjust it.…
Corbin had only recently learned to walk.
He wandered between fallen logs and picnic tables, alternating between crawling and taking a few careful steps before dropping back onto his hands. Dry leaves crunched beneath his feet.
The entrance to the cave barely announced itself.…
We reached Ueno Zoo an hour before it opened.
It felt like we were already late.
A line—mostly of older women—stretched from the entrance and wrapped through a maze of green safety cones.
Staff members kept extending the switchbacks as more people arrived.…
The museum opened with a room-sized panorama of Hiroshima in 1942, followed by another taken from the same vantage point three years later.
Before and after in stark comparison.
My son noticed it at once.
“It’s all broken.”
~
A model of Hiroshima sat in the middle of the second room.…
We’d been traveling for twelve hours: a trolley to Hiroshima Station, a bullet train to Tokyo, then a subway toward the airport.
We arrived in Tokyo just one minute late.
A single minute.
The conductor apologized.
~
Tokyo Station seemed to stretch for blocks beneath the city.…
The subway had left us at the edge of the Royal Castle Park.
We followed the other people along a path, then stopped at the first opening.
“Is this the way?”
Dani checked the map on her phone.
“No.”
We walked farther.…
A sign beside the toy shop door listed its hours.
Open 16:00–18:00 Wednesday and Friday.
It was Sunday. The town was quiet, and every other shop we passed was dark.
Then Dani stopped.
Someone was inside.
Through the window, we could see the owner hunched over a workbench among shelves of wooden toys. …
The horse seemed impossibly large.
Even through the rain, the monument dominated the point where the Rhine and Moselle met, a mountain of dark stone with an emperor on horseback balanced above it.
Corbin wanted nothing to do with it.
The broad staircase climbing the pedestal was soaked by freezing rain, each stone step polished smooth by more than a century of feet.…
Avery rolled out of bed in the middle of the night.
The crash woke me, followed by the soft cry of startlement.
I scooped him into my arms, pulling him into bed with me.
He settled against my chest almost immediately.…
My stride was sure. The grass was wet.
The kids were back at the apartment watching a movie.
Dani was asleep.
I had promised her forty-five minutes.
Then I slipped out the door.
~
The vineyards climbed the hillside in five enormous terraces, each held in place by a stone retaining wall nearly six feet high.…
We reached Boris and Gleb just as the sun touched the horizon.
The church was nearly nine hundred years old.
A single room. One display. Interiors already growing dark in the falling light.
We spent less than ten minutes there.
The attendant had already put on her coat and gloves by the time we were ready to leave.…
Vineyards covered every hillside around Bacharach.
For days, we’d walked among them.
The boys hardly noticed.
On our last evening, something clicked.
~
We’d set out, for one last family hike to the Postenturm tower.
Both boys grabbed their wooden swords from the toy shop, and off we went.…
Cologne Zoo greeted us with cheetahs. They waited behind a low fence, seemingly close enough to touch.
The kids didn’t notice.
Instead, Avery ran to the playground.
Corbin followed.
A tower rose above us on wooden posts, connected to another by a rope bridge.…
Tokyo Disneyland smelled like curry popcorn.
I stepped off the train, saw the Mickey-ear headbands, the crowds, the castle, and something inside me sagged.
Dani looked over.
“You look miserable.”
I kept walking.
“No I don’t.”
“Whatever.”
She took the boys’ hands and headed toward the gates.…
The plaza in front of Mainz Cathedral stretched wide and car-free.
In front of it, our kids ran around the plaza—arms outstretched, scattering birds from statue to statue.
“Pigeon, pigeon, pigeon!”
“Bird!”
It didn’t matter that their words weren’t legible.
It didn’t matter that they made a scene.…
Corbin had been asking the same question every day since Bacharach.
“I want to go home.”
He said it on the Rhine. He said it during hikes, at breakfast, and before bed. Every plan and every event was met with suspicion.…
I raised my camera and tried to frame Cologne Cathedral.
It shadowed the plaza with Gothic columns of ashen stone and the blackened backsides of its stained-glass windows, the plaza floors casting dancing reflections of the gargoyle and buttresses.
Rain pelted me and began soaking through my shirt
In the distance, Avery began crying.…
Around five, I slipped across to 7-Eleven for dinner.
I couldn’t believe the choices.
Far from the gas-station convenience stores I expected, refrigerators held rows of neatly prepared meals.
I chose noodles for the kids—thick noodles in a salty broth.
For myself, rice topped with sliced beef, sprouted barley, and a soft-boiled egg.…
Once the kids were down, the wrappers from their convenience store noodles scattered across the table, Dani and I agreed I’d go fetch us dinner.
She’d found a nearby sushi place with options she could eat and sent me out with a small smile that says this will be nice for both of us.…
It was “Favorites Day” at school— wear your favorite clothes, bring your favorite snack, share your favorite toy for show-and-tell.
That morning, Avery picked out his favorite Mickey Mouse sweater with matching Mickey Mouse pants, and red shoes that complimented his hair and cheeks.…
We’d escaped the Ueno Natural History Museum with four stuffed animals, two for each kid, clutched with reverence as we squeezed onto the crowded bus at Ueno Park.
Onboard, the four of us became separated by the shuffle of bodies.
Dani found a seat on one side, Avery curling into her lap.…
“No strollers allowed.”
The attendant said pointed to a giant escalator.
I couldn’t see the top.
Next to it sat a model of the aquarium, a single passage completing a corkscrew through seven floors of exhibits.
It was our second day in Osaka, and we’d arrived when the aquarium opened.…
At the cable car ticket booth, the attendant apologized as she charged us extra.
“This is a special event day. The castle grounds are hosting an enormous market.”
Dani nudged me.
“A market.”
~
The cable car climbed slowly over the Rhine.…
